Learn the Stories Behind the 15 Most Unforgettable Songs of 1973

We're counting down the top songs 50 years ago this year.

Welcome back to 1973, a very good year for fantastic music. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 50 years since the debuts by artists as enduring as Billy Joel, Aerosmith and Bruce Springsteen. And a half century has passed since performers like Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight & the Pips and the solo Ringo Starr were at their sales peaks. The hits those artists generated in that year haven’t left the culture for a minute since, but the stories behind those songs have often been forgotten.

These are the tales behind 15 of 1973’s biggest hits.

The Biggest Songs of 1973

Pink Floyd “Money”

“Money…is the root of all evil today,” sang Roger Waters in a song that made him fantastically wealthy. In fact, getting rich was very much on his mind at the time. “Money interested me enormously,” he told the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. “I was coveting a Bentley like crazy. The only way to get something like that was through rock or the football pools.”

The particular way Waters got his wealth was by creating a hook listeners couldn’t get out of their heads. The one in “Money” cleverly sifted together a series of sound effects—rattling coins, a ringing cash register and a ticking counting machine—into a rhythm no one could resist. That, combined with the song’s wailing guitar and grinding sax solo, made “Money” the first track to hit off The Dark Side of the Moon, an album that went on to sell an estimated 45 million copies. Dark Side stubbornly remained on the Billboard chart for nearly 1,000 weeks, generating enough lucre to buy Waters fresh Bentleys every year for the rest of his life if he wanted them.

Lynyrd Skynyrd “Free Bird”

One of the most celebrated guitar anthems of all time became even better known as a punch line. For decades, countless concertgoers have been randomly shouting unsolicited song requests for Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” no matter who happens to be performing on stage at the time. So, how did this wacky tradition begin? Three years after the studio version of the song appeared, Skynyrd recorded a live album, One More from The Road, during which singer Ronnie Van Zant asked the crowd “what song is it you wanna hear?” In unison, they screamed “Free Bird,” inspiring a frenzied 14-and-a-half-minute version of the song. Fans have been imitating that entreaty as a joke ever since. You can hear someone shout for it on the full version of Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged set. And, just this past July, at a Jackson Browne concert in New York, a fan shouted the time-honored request, which caused the singer to quip: “The strange thing is, somehow that’s still funny.”

Billy Joel “Piano Man”

The lowest period in Billy Joel’s career inspired the song he may be best known for. After signing a terrible contract for his first album, Cold Spring Harbor, the New York-based Joel hid out in Los Angeles where he performed under the fake name Bill Martin. (The star’s real full name is William Martin Joel). For six months, Joel sang at a small lounge while his new label, Columbia, finagled to get him out of his old deal. The song’s lyrics feature the characters he met while he performed there, from the failed novelist Paul to Davy “who’s still in the Navy.” Sad as aspects of their lives may have been, the narrator’s music helps them “forget about life for a while.” The vividness of the tale, and the sing-along chorus, helped make “Piano Man” Joel’s first Top 40 hit and, eventually, his signature piece.

Aerosmith “Dream On”

While “Dream On” rates as one of the most popular power ballads of all time, it barely made a blip when it appeared as Aerosmith’s debut single in 1973. Only radio stations in the group’s hometown of Boston recognized its brilliance. Rolling Stone magazine didn’t even review the corresponding album it came from. In fact, two full years passed before “Dream On” became a Top Ten hit, after grueling work on the road. The song itself had an even longer incubation. Singer Steven Tyler wrote the music for it when he was 17, inspired by the classical works played by his father, a Julliard-trained pianist. He came up with the lyrics even earlier—at 14—but they proved prophetic: “Dream On” made Aerosmith’s dreams come true.

Elton John “Candle in the Wind”

Everyone knows that Elton’s sentimental ballad paid homage to Marilyn Monroe. But that wasn’t the only inspiration for Bernie Taupin’s lyrical ode. “The song could just as easily have been written about James Dean or Jim Morrison or Kurt Cobain,” Elton later said. “Basically, anybody who died young. It’s beauty frozen in time.”

Taupin borrowed the song title’s phrase from record mogul Clive Davis, who used it to describe Janis Joplin after her death in 1970. Popular as the song may have been in ‘73, it wasn’t issued as a single then. A live version, cut 15 years later, was the one that broke Billboard’s Top Ten. The song did even better a decade later in the version Elton and Bernie created for their close friend Princess Diana after her death. For that recording, they changed the opening from “Goodbye, Norma Jean” to “Goodbye, English Rose.” The resulting song did even better in the U.S. than in Diana’s U.K. home. Stateside, it held the No. 1 spot for 14 weeks, while in Britain it lasted five. The Diana version went on to become the second biggest-selling single of all time after Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.”

Marvin Gaye “Let’s Get It On”

One of the sexiest songs ever recorded originally addressed something far more troubling. The initial version, penned by Ed Townsend, expressed his need to overcome his alcoholism. While Gaye loved the song’s melody, he convinced Townsend to let him recast the words to reflect his romantic feelings at the time for Janis Hunter, who would later become his second wife and the mother of two of his children. Gaye sang the song directly to Hunter in the studio, which, no doubt, enhanced the sensuality of the performance, which in turn helped make “Let’s Get It On” Motown’s best-selling single to that date.

Tony Orlando and Dawn “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree”

Everyone loves a song that tells a story. But few have proven as impactful as the tale of the yellow ribbon. Inspiration came from a 1971 story in the New York Post by Pete Hamill entitled “Going Home” in which some kids on a bus meet a man who just got out of jail. He tells them of a letter he sent his wife asking her to tie a yellow handkerchief around a tree as a sign that she wanted to take him back. If he didn’t see the handkerchief, he would move on. In the original story, the tree he sees is draped in yellow. The writers of the song changed the handkerchief to a more musical word—ribbon—and greatly upped the number of them choking the tree. In the decades since, the yellow ribbon has become an oft-employed symbol of remembrance and welcome, first used to greet soldiers returning from the Vietnam War. In 1980, many used them to remember the U.S. hostages in Iran.

Ringo Starr “Photograph”

Starr’s first No. 1 solo hit doubled as his first official writing collaboration with another ex-Beatle: George Harrison. At the same time, there was considerable tension between the two during that era. Harrison had a brief affair with Starr’s then wife, Maureen. (Harrison’s spouse, Pattie Boyd, found the pair in bed.) Though Starr initially threatened to divorce Maureen, the marriage lasted another few years, and his friendship with Harrison quickly recovered. The guitarist went on to write more songs for the drummer. In a tribute concert to Harrison after his death, Starr performed “Photograph” and, witnesses say, it left few dry eyes in the house.

Cher “Half-Breed”

When Cher’s song about a young woman who is universally shunned for her mixed-race identity came out 50 years ago, no one talked about things like “cultural appropriation.” Today, however, there might be controversy over an artist recording a song about the child of a Cherokee woman and a white father who has a dubious connection to Indian culture. While Cher has claimed she is 1/16^th Cherokee on her mother’s side, this has never been verified. Either way, the writers of the song clearly had no knowledge of the culture. In Cherokee society, a child born to a mother from the tribe would be fully accepted by it. Then again, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking such a delightfully silly song seriously enough to get worked up about all this. Cher herself has dismissed any criticisms and continues to perform the song in her show. Anyone who wants to hear a version of “Half-Breed” recorded by someone better connected to Indigenous culture can look to a 1990 take by Shania Twain. Her stepfather is an Ojibwe Native American.

Steve Miller “The Joker”

Few phrases in pop history have invited more amused head-scratching than the reference in “The Joker” to “the pompatus of love?” Luckily for Miller, that strange phrase fascinated listeners as much as it confounded them. They were drawn, too, by Miller’s self-referential puzzle of lyrics that alluded to “the space cowboy,” “the gangster of love,” and “Maurice,” all of which echoed titles of earlier songs by the star. As to the lineage of “pompatus,” a similar word turned up in a 1954 hit by the doo-wop group The Medallions. Miller himself had a cheekier take on it. During his induction speech at the Songwriters of Hall of Fame in 2022 he alluded to the word by saying “My attorney is here tonight, and he will explain exactly what it is and how much it costs when you say it.”

Gladys Knight “Midnight Train to Georgia”

In its original form, Knight’s signature song made no reference to the state of Georgia. Initially, songwriter Jim Weatherly entitled his piece, “Midnight Plane to Houston,” inspired by an evocative phrase used by his friend, actress Farrah Fawcett, in a conversation with her husband at the time, Lee Majors. Weatherly first cut the song himself in a country version, but about a year later, he got a call that Cissy Houston (Whitney’s mom) wanted to record it with an R&B flair. To avoid the redundancy between her surname and the title city, she asked if she could change the destination to Georgia. Weatherly said yes, so long as she didn’t change anything else. While Cissy’s version didn’t connect, it caught the ear of Knight, whose emotive take gave her group its first No. 1 smash. They scored two other hits that year— “Neither One of Us” and “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination”—making 1973 the Pips’ peak season.

Stevie Wonder “Living for the City”

Few songs that dare to address racism with the unflinching honesty of “Living for the City” have become major hits. But the passion of Wonder’s music, combined with the power of his vocals, helped send his song sailing into the Top 10. As Wonder himself told the website Songfacts, “I think the deepest I really got into how I feel about the way things are was in ‘Living for the City.’ I was able to show the hurt and the anger.”

He even managed to do so in the abridged version that became the single. The full, seven- minute version on the album goes further, using shocking language that was later sampled by the rap group Public Enemy. The recording also stood out for its inventive use of sampled street sounds, including honking cars, blaring sirens and everyday conversations. Small wonder the classic album it appeared on, Innervisions —which also featured the funk smash “Higher Ground”—nabbed the 1973 “Album of Year” Grammy.

Paul McCartney and Wings “Live and Let Die”

McCartney scored a number of firsts with his theme for the Bond film Live and Let Die. It was the first 007 song to hit No. 1, the first created by a rock artist and the first to be nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar. (It lost to Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were.”) The producers of Bond first asked McCartney to write the theme for the previous film in the franchise, Diamonds Are Forever, but contractual issues prevented that. When they sent the musician the script for the new film two years later, he was initially flummoxed. “I thought, ‘the hardest thing to do here is to work in that title,’” he told Mojo magazine in 2010. Once he got his head around the fact that the title really meant “live and let live,” the music flowed. Another potential issue arose when the producers wanted Shirley Bassey (of “Goldfinger” fame) to perform it instead of Wings. McCartney said they couldn’t have the song unless he sang it. The result proved so successful that Paul has kept it in his live set ever since.

Edgar Winter “Frankenstein”

Fans have long wondered where Winter’s instrumental smash got its title. Many thought it derived from its monstrously heavy beat. In fact, it had to do with the song’s construction. The original, improvised version of “Frankenstein” went on forever, so hacking it into a digestible form took no small amount of musical surgery. “Back in those days, when you edited something, you had to physically cut the tape and splice it back together,” Winter told Songfacts.com. “We were making fun of how to put it back together. And, at one point, my drummer, Chuck Ruff, said ‘it’s like Frankenstein.’” “That’s it,’” said Winter. “The monster was born.”

Bruce Springsteen “Blinded by the Light”

Only one Springsteen song has ever topped the singles chart, but it wasn’t the Boss’s version that did it. His 1973 version didn’t even chart. Only when Manfred Mann’s Earth Band covered it four years later did “Blinded by the Light” become a smash. Several key changes Mann made have been given credit for the success. First, he added a piano part that mimicked “Chopsticks,” creating a maddeningly catchy hook. Then, the band’s singer, Chris Thompson, pronounced a word in the song—“deuce”—in a way that made it sound like a feminine hygiene product. Radio stations in the South refused to play a song with that word so Mann’s record company said he had to change it. Due to technical issues, however, they couldn’t do so without making it sound even stranger. The result turned out to be a boon. “So many people came up to us after and said, ‘You know what made it No.1?’” Mann told Record Collector magazine. “Everyone was trying to figure out whether it was ‘deuce’ or ‘douche.’”